Somehow this time of year is almost as exciting as kidding.
I went to visit my friends at Simply Dutch Farm last week. This is Aries. We will be breeding Scilla to him again. Having friends right up the road with this awesome Alpine buck makes it so much easier to keep my silly Alpine!
I weigh taped all the girls to give them their BoSe shots and copper boluses. My baby girls are growing well!
Ysabel is 105 lbs, Posey 80, Olivia 72, Ilona 70, and Tansy 75. The goal is minimum 80 pounds at 7-8 months. Since they are only 5 and 6 months old, I think we'll have no problem. We've managed to grow them pretty big this year.
I needed the pen where I had the little girls housed for the dry yearlings and Whiskey Baron. I'm hoping for February 1 kids, so the little girls got moved back with the milkers.
These innocent faces decided they still want to nurse so I rigged a temporary "baby goat jail".
Next year, most of the kids will be bottle raised. I've been hesitant to do that, but this is too much a pain in the rear. Any kid where I plan to keep both dam and doeling is going on a bottle!
Thursday, the boys and I put up some panels for another pen for the little girls. Then yesterday, Jeff cut a door through the barn into the kidding stall for them. We built the kidding stall last winter and really had no use for it, except for another place to put does who were due anytime. It was pretty dark and didn't have access to the outside at all. This will make it much more functional.
I am boarding a few does for breeding this year. The extra space will be really helpful.
Now we watch and wait for them to go into heat!
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